Nancy Lyon

Since its inception, Nancy Lyon has been the secret power behind Bleak Beauty. A founding member of Bleak Beauty Books, she had edited books and photographs, done sound recording and assisted in film editing. The daughter of a seamstress, Nancy has been making quilts since 1977. These quilts are made of cotton, hand quilted on a wooden frame and often contain over a thousand individually sewn pieces. (The Nine Patch Tea Cup quilt has 1620 individual pieces, plus the border strips. The Bear Paw, with its border of hundreds of small triangles, contains even more.) Quilting, originally a way of making bed covers out of scraps, is an indigenous craft that goes back in the Americas at least to the 18th century. Nancy has never exhibited her quilts, or offered them for sale. A rarity in this world, she is content to make the quilts for the sheer joy of making them. Each Tuesday she quilts with the United Memorial Methodist Church Quilters of Modena, New York, where she is the recording secretary. Nancy, who was born in Chicago in 1949, is the mother and step mother of four children.

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Who are we?
Where do we come from?
Where are we going?

This generation born in war, born in the jail cells of the South, born at the Pentagon march, watches in disbelief as the country is paved over, malls replacing corn fields, synthetic food replacing corn, cash replacing value. What has become of us? Is the country brain dead? Is this what we have done with our freedom? Our greatest surviving value is greed. Is that what our legacy will be? What shall we tell the children?

The 16mm Films of Danny Lyon, preserved as high resolution scans

After his ground breaking work as a photojournalist in the 1960’s, Danny Lyon turned to films, making a series of non-fiction films in the 1970’s and 1980’s. With the recent recognition of the 2016 de Young/Whitney retrospective, funds were provided to preserve these remarkable 16mm films. High resolution digital scans were made from the original A&B negative rolls under the close supervision of the artist. The DVD covers themselves, first made for VHS tapes, have been recognized for their power and realism, and are on display at the San Francisco Museum of Art show which opened November 3rd, 2016.

These are great digital copies of some of the best non-fiction films of the seventies and eighties, exclusively available from Bleak Beauty.

The entire body of Danny Lyon 16mm film work can also be streamed on Vimeo. The sixties meets the twenty first century.View Bleak Beauty Films